pga tour business with saudi arabia

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Here's why the PGA Tour just merged with LIV Golf

The PGA Tour announced Tuesday it would merge with LIV Golf, a Saudi-backed men's golf organization that formed last year to compete with the PGA.

News of the merger sent shock waves through the sports world and even reached the highest echelons of the U.S. government, after a reporter sought comment from the Biden administration about the Saudi government's taking such a large stake in men's golf. Biden spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment.

Here's what it all means.

What is LIV Golf?

LIV was created in 2022 by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) alongside two of the world's most prominent players, Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman, and others.

Norman was appointed CEO, but it was Mickelson who helped LIV come into existence. Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of not fairly compensating players for things like highlight clips and other media rights , accusing the organization of "obnoxious greed."

Eventually, Mickelson helped persuade 48 players to abandon the PGA Tour for LIV.

The merger has shown that Saudi Arabia and its interests cannot be isolated, veteran U.S. diplomat Richard N. Haass said.

“It's not as big as the Biden visit or agreement with Iran , and it doesn't offset their recent failure to raise oil prices,” said Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations . "But it does send the signal they are a player who cannot be ignored."

Why did the PGA Tour initially bar players from participating in LIV?

The PGA Tour immediately viewed LIV Golf as a direct competitor — and many in the golf world agreed, often referring to it as a “breakaway league.”

So the Tour decided to force players to pick a side, creating harsh divisions in the golf world.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan also seemed to disparage the presence of the Saudis in LIV, asking rhetorically in a June 2022 interview , “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

And in response to a lawsuit from players who'd joined LIV and said the PGA Tour had retaliated against them, lawyers for the organization condemned LIV as “a strategy by the Saudi government to use sports in an effort to improve its reputation for human rights abuses and other atrocities.”

So why is the PGA Tour merging with LIV?

The two leagues ended up suing each other — but acrimony and lawsuits ultimately proved bad business for the PGA Tour, which made the calculated decision to endure the blowback of turning 180 degrees in exchange for a unified effort with its former rival.

Lawsuits filed by suspended players and a federal probe into possible antitrust actions by the PGA Tour against LIV may also be moot in the wake of Tuesday's announcement.

"We've recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart," Monahan told CNBC, seated next to his LIV counterpart, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. "And I give Yasir great credit for coming to the table, coming to the discussions with an open heart and open mind."

Despite the vast financial resources at its disposal thanks to its Saudi backing, LIV had failed to secure major TV deals to broadcast its events, which were often instead relegated to livestreams on YouTube.

With its commercial viability in doubt, LIV officials may have decided it was better to cut their losses and approach the PGA Tour with an offering of peace — and money.

How much money is involved? What are the financial incentives on both sides?

Terms of the merger haven't been disclosed, but LIV Golf players were reportedly being promised eight- and nine-figure earnings to join the league, thanks to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is worth about $676 billion.

CNBC's David Faber, who helped break Tuesday's news with an exclusive interview with Monahan and Al-Rumayyan, said the PIF plans to invest "billions" into the newly formed entity while it retains a minority stake.

How will major golf events be affected?

They won't.

The Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open (now known as The Open) and the PGA Championship (which, despite its name, isn't actually owned by the PGA Tour) are all separate entities from the PGA Tour.

Nor does the Tour control the biennial team-based Ryder Cup tournament — though heading into this year's event, there were questions about whether U.S. team captain Zach Johnson would forgo selecting LIV members.

Have there been mergers in professional sports before?

All four of North America's major professional team sports leagues have some kind of merger in their histories, most notably the NFL-AFL union that led to the Super Bowl.

The first World Series in 1903 , the 1976 NBA-ABA deal and the NHL's 1979 takeover of the upstart WHA , though, all pale in comparison to the geopolitical stage where the PGA Tour-LIV drama played out.

What are people in golf saying?

As expected, reaction to the stunning deal ran the gamut — from LIV backers' spiking the ball to 9/11 survivors' criticizing the PGA Tour for merging with the Saudi-backed LIV, which they likened to “terrorists,” with others resigned to money's simply ruling the day.

Former President Donald Trump typed in all caps on Truth Social, boasting that he predicted that the PGA Tour would have to come to terms with LIV.

A key Sept. 11 support group, 9/11 Families United, said it was "shocked and deeply offended" and claimed the merger is "bankrolled by billions in sportswashing money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." It added: "Saudi operatives played a key role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now it is bankrolling all of professional golf."

George Washington University sports marketing professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti verbally shrugged her shoulders and said the deal shouldn't have been a shock.

"I ask my students how to spell the word 'sports?' It's m-o-n-e-y," she said. "Fans have a short memory. They really want to see their stars. They want to see a better product."

Rob Wile is a breaking business news reporter for NBC News Digital.

David K. Li is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.

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How big of a win for MBS is the Saudi-PGA golf deal, actually?

The Saudi play for American golf, explained.

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The golf course is perhaps not the arena that immediately comes to mind when you’re thinking about geopolitics. But with one proposed golf business deal, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, just hit the geopolitical equivalent of a hole-in-one.

The surprise announcement this week that Saudi-backed LIV Golf would merge with the preeminent American PGA Tour under a new parent company means MBS has gained a powerful hand over American and international golf.

LIV Golf is a newish enterprise launched by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which is essentially the half-trillion-dollar piggy bank of the crown prince. Since launching in 2022, the tour used its massive budget to attract top talent away from the PGA Tour, even as human rights advocates, activists, and some players emphasized LIV’s connections to MBS and his brutal reign . LIV golfers sued the PGA Tour on the grounds that it is allegedly engaging in monopolistic behavior by barring its players from participating in LIV.

Many golfers were against the Saudi-backed entry into the sport. Tiger Woods declined some $700 million to join LIV. But others, with a dose of reluctance, took part. Golfer Phil Mickelson nabbed $200 million to participate in LIV, though even he conceded , “We know they killed [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights.” Other big players jumped on board too, but not without controversy and some anger. As recently as last month, onlookers in New York booed LIV golfers.

Then, on June 6, the PGA Tour announced that it was banding together with LIV and a Dubai-based European tour to establish a “new, collectively owned, for-profit entity.” Players took to Twitter to express their surprise at the deal, and even staffers at the PGA Tour were blindsided. Right now, the deal is just a “framework”; it will need to be finalized and approved by the PGA Tour’s policy board, and could face regulatory scrutiny .

But it’s already a dramatic development that could reshape the sport’s international landscape. Even more than that, it’s another sign of Saudi Arabia’s persistent and far-reaching strategy — across industries from Silicon Valley to Hollywood — to grow global influence. MBS is generating more and more wins.

“This is much, much bigger than golf,” says Khalid Al-Jabri, a Saudi entrepreneur and physician based in Washington, DC.

Details on the deal are still thin , and the memorandum between Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and the leagues is not public. Al-Jabri disputes whether this is best described as a merger. He calls it a “sadistic takeover” and emphasizes that this is going to be the model for how MBS will continue to make inroads in American affairs, whether through Big Tech or video gaming or sports, and sanitize the reputation of Saudi Arabia in the process.

“If you can’t join them, bully them until they allow you to come in,” Al-Jabri told me. “This is not about golf. This is about influence. And MBS got what he wanted.”

The Saudi play for American golf

If you want to buy influence, buy golf. That’s in essence what the blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey told the Saudi sovereign wealth fund when it provided it with a blueprint for “a high-risk high-reward endeavor” in 2021.

It was codenamed Project Wedge , and sought to boost Saudi Arabia’s global reputation, particularly after the 2018 killing of Khashoggi, MBS’s war in Yemen, and the blackmailing of Saudi royals at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh . The idea recalls the sportwashing of undemocratic regimes, as has been seen with the Olympics in Beijing or the World Cup in Qatar .

Later that year, LIV Golf launched with billions of dollars of Saudi backing. Money was hard to ignore. “LIV, financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, distributed $255 million in prize money in 2022, including $30 million in bonuses. In all, 52 golfers earned more than $1 million,” according to Golfweek .

It caused a major rift within the sport. The PGA Tour’s European partner, the DP World Tour, suspended and fined golfers who went over to LIV. In the US, LIV sued the PGA Tour for choking competition. The litigation has been costly and dramatic, and the PGA Tour lacks the cash reserves of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. The PIF also hired the powerhouse global consultancy Teneo, “to disrupt professional golf and compete with the Tour via LIV,” according to the PGA Tour’s motion .

The US Justice Department is investigating the PGA Tour on possible antitrust violations, as news reports indicated last summer.

Throughout, golfers expressed outrage about the meaning of Saudi Arabia moving onto the course, but those who signed up for LIV suddenly became rather reserved. “These golfers are very opinionated. They’ve always been opinionated. They’ve been shy about sharing their opinions. Now, if you look at the people who have signed deals with LIV, all of a sudden, they have no opinions whatsoever,” a PGA Tour representative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me earlier this year. “They’re prohibited from disparaging any investor, which in this case actually means the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The PGA Tour spent the last year and a half focused on incompatibilities between the two tours, with an emphasis that LIV is not serious golf. Yet the announcement of what appears to be a merger this week has given MBS a seat at the table.

“There was a price at which PGA Tour was willing to sell itself to Saudi Arabia,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, the group founded by the slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund will provide “a capital investment into the new entity to facilitate its growth and success,” according to a press release, and that could mean billions . “This new entity (name TBD) will also include the PGA TOUR’s commercial businesses and rights, as well as those of the DP World Tour,” the statement continues. The lawsuits between the two will reportedly stop, but generally the details remain murky.

Each tour would reportedly still be responsible for running its own operations .

MBS, it might be said, is smart to focus on sportswashing. “The only question is whether the American people and their elected officials want to be influenced and controlled by a murderous dictator,” Whitson told me.

This is much bigger than golf. This is about influence.

After the assassination and disappearance of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi in 2018, MBS became a liability. On the campaign trail, candidate Joe Biden pledged to make him a “ pariah .”

But now, the Biden administration has warmed to Saudi Arabia, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was even visiting MBS in the Saudi capital this week in a sign of where things stand. In a statement, the secretary “emphasized that our bilateral relationship is strengthened by progress on human rights,” suggesting that the two countries had turned a corner.

MBS has slowly and steadily been welcomed back to the business world, too. That has been due in large part to his financial largesse and how the Public Investment Fund has funneled billions of dollars into Silicon Valley . Those investments are now openly celebrated by tech leaders (though when I reached out to dozens of American investment funds and startups, none of them wanted to talk about it).

PIF’s venture arm, Sanabil, is putting $2 billion a year into products we consume and tech we benefit from. It has direct investments in Bird scooters and AI startups Vectra and Atomwise. Plus, there’s indirect money going through other venture funds into companies including Credit Karma, GitLab , Reddit, and Postmates , as well as the popular running shoe brand On or the military-tech darling and Pentagon contractor Anduril .

Among the previously undisclosed firms that had received Saudi funds: Andreessen Horowitz, whose portfolio companies include Instacart and SpaceX .

And then there are the forays into WWE , horse racing , soccer , and Formula 1 . There have been investments in Hollywood and film , in media , and in the arts .

Saudi dollars have become so ubiquitous that footballer Lionel Messi going to Miami over Saudi Arabia seemed to be a rare exception .

One thing to add is that former President Donald Trump , who owns a global network of golf courses, stands to benefit . He has hosted LIV events at his resorts, and the chairman of the Public Investment Fund was spotted golfing with him last year in a MAGA hat.

“We have to see Saudi Arabia’s investment in golf as a very deliberate strategy to expand their influence and control over America’s political, economic, and cultural institutions,” Whitson told me. “Money won this round.”

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How the shocking PGA Tour-LIV Golf deal went down

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THE MOST UNLIKELY union in professional golf history -- the PGA Tour's stunning partnership last week with the DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund -- started with a WhatsApp message. The fact the sender was James Dunne III, a Wall Street dealmaker, makes the alliance even more improbable.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, with about $620 billion in assets, is financing the rival LIV Golf League, which has traded blows with the PGA Tour during a bitter two-year battle to topple each other for supremacy in the sport. As the game's best players gather this week at Los Angeles Country Club for the 123rd U.S. Open, the fractured sport seems closer than ever to reuniting.

Dunne, an independent director on the PGA Tour's policy board, was one of the founders of Sandler O'Neill and Partners, an investment banking firm that lost 40% of its employees when hijackers crashed a plane into the south tower of the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. All but four of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi citizens, and the Saudi kingdom was the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda and mastermind of the attack.

Dunne would have been in the south tower that day if he hadn't been on the back nine of his Wall Street career. Instead of going to work, Dunne was trying to qualify for the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Bedford Golf and Tennis Club, about 40 miles north of Manhattan. A golfer with an impressive 1 handicap at the time, Dunne was 1 under after four holes when a United States Golf Association official told him he needed to call his office because a plane had crashed into the twin towers. Dunne watched the skyscrapers collapse on TV in the club's pro shop.

Of the 171 Sandler O'Neill employees who worked on the 104th floor of the south tower, 66 died that morning, including two of Dunne's partners: his best friend, Chris Quackenbush, and his mentor, Herman Sandler.

Quackenbush, who Dunne had known since they were teenagers growing up on Long Island, had encouraged him to play in the U.S. Mid-Amateur qualifier at Bedford Golf and Tennis Club instead of one the day before in Greenwich, Connecticut, because the course better suited his game.

Dunne put his head down and rebuilt Sandler O'Neill. The firm had built its foundation on mergers and acquisitions involving small and medium-sized banks, but its deals kept getting bigger and bigger. Dunne was an adviser on TD Ameritrade's merger with Charles Schwab and dozens of other billion-dollar acquisitions. Sandler O'Neill and Partners grew into the largest investment banking firm focused on the financial services sector. The company was acquired by Wall Street investment bank Piper Jaffray in 2020. CNBC reported the merger was worth about $485 million.

Dunne is president of Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida, home of the most famous pro-member tournament in the sport (LIV Golf players weren't invited this year). He's a member of several clubs, including Augusta National Golf Club and Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York, where he set the course record with a 63 in 2010 ( Tommy Fleetwood tied the mark in the final round of the 2018 U.S. Open). He is a close friend of PGA Tour stars Rory McIlroy , Rickie Fowler and others. When Dunne qualified for his first USGA event, the 2018 U.S. Senior Amateur Championship, Justin Thomas sent out a congratulatory tweet. Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady considers Dunne one of his most important mentors.

"When you've been around people a long time, you see the 360," Brady told Sports Illustrated in 2021. "Jimmy is an amazing leader, a great dad, a great husband ... honest as the day is long. You don't do amazing things by taking three knees and punting, hoping someone else makes a decision for you."

Even before joining the PGA Tour's policy board Jan. 1, 2023, Dunne had been working behind the scenes, talking to players and agents, in hopes of repairing the fractured sport, which had splintered like never before when two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman launched the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League and poached many of the PGA Tour's biggest stars with guaranteed contracts reportedly worth as much as $200 million.

With the Public Investment Fund (PIF) investing more than $2 billion into the breakaway circuit in its inaugural season in 2022, Norman was able to lure past major champions Dustin Johnson , Phil Mickelson , Brooks Koepka , Bryson DeChambeau and others away from the PGA Tour. Commissioner Jay Monahan suspended more than 30 players for competing in LIV Golf tournaments without conflicting event releases.

In August, 11 players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour in federal court, alleging it was using its monopoly power to quash competition. The PGA Tour countersued, accusing LIV Golf of interfering with its contracts with players. It was a full-blown golf civil war.

Enter Dunne, who is known as Jimmy to his colleagues and friends. His Wall Street pedigree in bringing sides together and making deals work made him a likely mediator to cool tensions between the sides. But he would have to put aside his personal feelings about 9/11 and Saudi Arabia's role in the terrorist attacks.

Once Dunne joined the PGA Tour's policy board, he wanted to reach out directly to not Norman but Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the sovereign wealth fund. After an arbitration panel in London ruled April 5 that the DP World Tour could impose sanctions on its members for competing in LIV Golf events, Monahan gave Dunne permission to contact Al-Rumayyan.

"What I always felt is that I didn't understand what the LIV Tour was really trying to accomplish," Dunne told ESPN. "And so at some point in time, between the legal expense and them basically recruiting our players, I thought it was important that we would speak to the main guy and not to anybody else. Over time, and after we had gotten some good legal victories, I was able to convince Jay that we should go over and try to find out if there is a middle ground here. Is there something we can do so that we can put the legal battle and the whole sort of conflict behind us?"

On the morning of April 18, Dunne sent Al-Rumayyan a message on WhatsApp. Al-Rumayyan responded a few minutes later. They spoke on the telephone for a while that day and agreed to meet in person in London later that month. It was the beginning of one of the most complicated deals in Dunne's career.

IN LATE APRIL, Dunne met Al-Rumayyan at a hotel outside London. They had dinner and smoked cigars together that night.

"He was approachable," Dunne said. "We spoke about golf, his career and his view of what he wanted to grow in the game of golf. My impression was that we can work together. He really loves the game of golf. He's very thoughtful and very calm, and I found him to be extremely decent."

The next day, Al-Rumayyan, a 12 handicap, and PGA Tour policy board co-chairman Ed Herlihy beat Dunne, a 5 handicap, and PIF attorney Brian Gillespie in a round of golf at Beaverbrook Golf Club in Surrey, England.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and 9/11 Families United, heavily criticized the PGA Tour's decision to do business with the Saudis in statements Tuesday .

Dunne raised eyebrows last week when he told the Golf Channel that he is convinced the Saudis he dealt with weren't involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I am quite certain -- and I have had conversations with a lot of very knowledgeable people -- that the people I'm dealing with had nothing to do with it," he said. "If someone can find someone who unequivocally was involved with it, I'll kill them myself."

Dunne returned to the U.S. and told Monahan he believed there was a chance they could come to some sort of compromise with the Saudis. Monahan told reporters last week that Dunne and Herlihy's early conversations with Al-Rumayyan and other PIF officials got the ball rolling in negotiations.

"The first conversation that I was not a part of was what was the most important conversation because of the position I've been in and what we've been trying to do with our tour," Monahan said. "But when they came back and said it was a positive conversation and that I should have a follow-up meeting, I think that's when things started to develop."

In May, Dunne, Herlihy and Monahan flew to Venice, Italy, where Al-Rumayyan was attending a wedding. Monahan spent time with Al-Rumayyan the night they arrived, and the entire group met for several hours the next day, hammering out the framework of what a potential alliance might look like.

On May 28, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, the men met again in San Francisco, where they finalized a formal plan. The next day, Monahan and Al-Rumayyan signed a two-page framework agreement for a partnership that would stun the golf world.

"I think there was a desire for both sides to come together to some kind of peace," Dunne said. "It was extremely complex and difficult, but people really wanted, in my mind, to do something that was going to be good for the game of golf."

ACCORDING TO DUNNE, Monahan will oversee the PGA Tour and the LIV Golf League under the agreement. At the end of LIV Golf's season in November, Monahan will evaluate whether the team-focused circuit of 54 holes, shotgun starts and no cuts will continue or fold. Dunne said it will be Monahan's decision alone.

It's unclear what Norman's role will be going forward, although he told staff last week that his circuit is a stand-alone entity and is making plans for 2024 and beyond. A LIV Golf spokesperson said Norman wasn't available for comment.

"In the end, it's really one person that will decide, and the PGA Tour will never fund any aspect of LIV," Dunne said.

According to Dunne, the PGA Tour will also control the new yet-to-be-named for-profit entity, which "combines PIF's golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial business and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour," according to the release.

Monahan will serve as the new company's CEO; Al-Rumayyan will be chairman. Dunne said the entity will consider future "strategic opportunities and evaluate if they'd be useful for the PGA Tour." It might be the purchase of a golf course, another tour or a media network. PIF will be the initial investor and will have the exclusive right to further inject more money into the company.

"The PGA Tour is the controlling partner of the new company," Dunne said. "It is extraordinarily unlikely that [Al-Rumayyan's] going to be involved in the day-to-day. No, he would not be involved in day-to-day. But if we were going to look for a strategic opportunity, we would obviously involve him and he'd help evaluate it and decide whether or not it would be worth them investing in it. It could be very possible that we could go a long period of time before there's any investment of any type."

The Saudis will be a bank for the new entity, according to Dunne, but only if money is needed. Dunne doesn't know how much the Saudis are willing to invest; Al-Rumayyan told CNBC he is prepared to spend "whatever it takes ... that's what we're committed for."

Dunne said PIF will invest in the new company, but not in the PGA Tour and won't pay its members. The PGA Tour will remain a 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organization and retain its own operations, including scheduling, sanctioning of events, rules and competition.

What will the Saudis get out of the deal? They'll make money if the new for-profit venture grows, and they'll get a seat at the table in the new global golf ecosystem. Dunne said Aramco, Saudi Arabia's public petroleum and natural gas company, could become a PGA Tour sponsor. Al-Rumayyan will join the PGA Tour policy board. As one person familiar with Al-Rumayyan told ESPN, "He wants to be standing under the tree at Augusta National on Thursday at the Masters."

ON JUNE 5, officials from the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF gathered at investment banker Michael Klein's office in New York to piece together a strategy in announcing the partnership. A news release was written and a media strategy was developed. Monahan and Al-Rumayyan would announce the deal together on CNBC the next morning, minutes after PGA Tour and DP World Tour players would be notified of the alliance in memos.

Dunne texted McIlroy, one of the PGA Tour's most loyal supporters, on Monday night, asking if they could talk the next morning. Dunne called McIlroy at 6:15 a.m. ET Tuesday to tell him the news.

"He seemed pleased that there would be peace coming," Dunne said. "He was pleased that there was the potential for peace. He was aware that there had been some contact back and forth, but had no knowledge, intentionally on both parties, where dialogue was."

McIlroy said Dunne told him, "Rory, sometimes you got 280 over water, you just got to go for it."

"I still hate LIV," McIlroy said. "Like, I hate LIV. I hope it goes away, and I would fully expect that it does. I think that's where the distinction here is. This is the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF -- very different from LIV."

Players have criticized Monahan and DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley for keeping them in the dark about perhaps the most important decision in the circuit's history. Dunne said confidentiality was paramount in such a controversial deal.

"We wanted to treat all the players equally because a deal like this has so much emotion in it," Dunne said. "I didn't want to be in the situation where we told some players and not others. If you told 20 or 30, you would have no confidentiality. People had their own particular interests, could do what they would want to do, [and] some might try to derail the deal. What we tried to do is get what we thought was a very good deal for the PGA Tour and then present that to the players."

Shortly after the agreement was announced, Monahan flew to Toronto, the site of last week's RBC Canadian Open. He met with more than 100 players for longer than an hour. Monahan described the meeting as "tense," and a few players called for his resignation.

"The reason why there was so much backlash during the meeting was we were just all kind of in a state of shock," said longtime PGA Tour member Brandt Snedeker . "Nobody knew it was coming. I think inevitably with these kinds of deals, you never know they're coming, otherwise, they'd never get done."

Australia's Geoff Ogilvy said Monahan only provided players with "broad strokes" and few details because the plan hadn't been formally approved. Ogilvy said he was a "little bit grumpy" with Monahan, but "generally felt for him because he clearly can't tell us anything."

"He said, 'Hang in there. This is actually a good deal,'" Ogilvy said.

There was a heated exchange during the meeting between McIlroy and Grayson Murray , the 232nd-ranked player in the world, who shouted for Monahan to resign, saying, "We don't trust you, Jay. You lied to our face."

Two days after the meeting, Murray told ESPN that he hadn't changed his mind about Monahan.

"What I said in the meeting about [how] I hope he resigns and the people underneath him [resign], I stand by that," Murray said. "I haven't talked to Jay. I've known Jay for a long time, and I think this whole thing just has been handled the wrong way. I think we just need a new face.

"I think there are some things going on internally that we don't know about, and I don't think they'll ever come out, which just seems fishy. It's all happening so quickly without the players' knowledge. It's something so important, like the biggest thing that's ever happened to our tour, and we find out the morning it comes out."

Murray said others in the room were upset about the PGA Tour's lack of transparency. Players don't have the power to force Monahan out. Only the policy board can make that decision, and Dunne and Herlihy helped him broker the deal with the Saudis.

The full policy board, which consists of three other independent directors, five players ( Patrick Cantlay , Charley Hoffman , Peter Malnati , McIlroy and Webb Simpson ) and PGA of America director John Lindert, must still formally approve the alliance. Al-Rumayyan told CNBC that the deal should be approved in the coming weeks.

"I think some people agree with me, definitely," Murray said. "But you know, there's no way to get on the board and say, 'Hey, you're fired.' We don't have that power. That's why I think a union would be great for our sport. I don't know why we haven't come together with that. I think any other sport that has a union is doing great. They have power. They make decisions. It's a players' tour. At least they keep saying it's a players' tour."

Former world No. 1 golfer Justin Rose , an 11-time winner on the PGA Tour, said Monahan has a "hung jury" or "split camp" among his membership.

"I think some players maybe understand the pressure that he was under, and maybe the business side of things where some things just have to transpire the way they transpire," Rose said. "But, you know, other guys are not willing to accept the way it went down. It's a little muddy right now for sure."

Lucas Glover , the 2009 U.S. Open winner, said many PGA Tour players "want a pound of flesh right now."

"I think [Monahan's support] is probably pretty minimal right now because of just the reaction and it just hasn't played out yet," Glover said. "On its own head, it looks pretty awful. But I think a lot of people cooled off after the meeting and got some questions answered. I think the end result needs to be beneficial to the guys that stuck around, and that will go a long way to earn back trust."

One of the biggest concerns among most players, according to Ogilvy and Snedeker, is that LIV Golf League players won't be allowed to simply rejoin the PGA Tour. Dunne said a committee of players and administrators will decide on potential punishment for players who left and want to rejoin. He said golfers who left also won't be allowed to participate in a planned equity sharing in the new entity.

"I think you'd get a pretty strong consensus amongst the players that nobody really wants any of these guys to come back who went to LIV," Ogilvy said. "They would feel a bit cheated because we all chose the tour. Those who stayed, we chose the tour and were told that this is the right side to be on. 'Don't do this. You'll never come back. If you go, you'll never be able to come back.' That's the one thing I think that really was triggering all the boys is these guys, they've gone off and got their piles of money."

Snedeker said some LIV Golf players might have a more difficult time being accepted back than others.

"Most of those guys left on relatively good terms," Snedeker said. "I think there'll be some animosity towards the guys that sued us and drug us through the mud and tried to tell us how bad this tour is and how awful it is. I think there'll be some animosity towards them. But the majority of those guys just made a financial decision, business decision, so I don't think there'll be a ton of that."

ALONG WITH EARNING back some of his players' trust, Monahan has to get the deal across the finish line. That won't be easy, according to legal experts. The agreement might have ended all legal disputes between the PGA Tour and PIF, but the U.S. Department of Justice was already investigating the PGA Tour's alleged antitrust behavior. Federal regulators will undoubtedly scrutinize the new company as well, according to antitrust experts. The 1914 Clayton Act prohibits mergers and acquisitions that eliminate competition.

Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and former special assistant to President Joe Biden for technology and competition policy, said there is a "100% chance" DOJ enforcers take a close look at the new alliance. Wu said regulators in Europe also might take a hard look.

"If PIF had just invested in PGA when they were a monopoly, that would be a totally different story," Wu said. "The challenge here, and this could be any industry, is if you have a monopolist and you have a startup, some kind of competitor to it. [The startup] starts to get some traction, or not. Then you decide to just like, 'Hey, let's agree not to compete and share the profits.' That's what the antitrust law bans you from doing."

The agreement hasn't been finalized and paperwork hasn't been submitted to the federal government. The deal could be restructured, or PIF and the PGA Tour could simply try to ram it through. When ESPN asked Dunne if the new company would pass the antitrust test, he said, "I'm not a lawyer."

Wu noted that the Department of Justice recently blocked an announced merger between American Airlines and JetBlue Airways. Last month, a federal judge upheld the ruling and ordered the airlines to separate.

"They tried to say it wasn't a merger," Wu said. "The airlines said, 'Well, it's not a merger. We're just an alliance and combining.' But the Justice Department said, 'Look, if you stop competing on prices and stop competing for customers, you're no longer competing, and that's what we care about.' So, the Justice Department cares whether you're agreeing not to compete, whatever laws you want to put on it. That's what they care about."

Northwestern law professor Gerald Maatman, one of the country's leading antitrust lawyers, said PIF's lawyers will have a difficult time walking back their previous comments about the PGA Tour being a monopoly and using its power to quash competition.

"In essence, it's like, 'Forget about all the allegations we made in our lawsuit. We didn't mean it,'" Maatman said. "From a legal standpoint, it's very hard to unring the bell when you make those allegations. They're called judicial admissions by the law. Truth is not a weathervane that turns when the wind blows towards your self-interest. And when you say something in court, it's kind of hard to weasel out of it down the road."

Monahan will also have to clarify his comment to reporters last week that the deal was "ultimately, to take the competitor off of the board -- to have them exist as a partner, not an owner -- and for us to be able to control the direction going forward."

"That's surprising he would say this, that one of the benefits of the deal is eliminating competition," said Craig Seebald, a partner and antitrust expert at Vinson & Elkins law firm. "This is just the heart of it. I probably talked to 30 or 40 antitrust lawyers, and everybody's just scratching their heads saying, 'Why would you say that?' I mean, that'd be the last thing you'd want your client to say."

Several U.S. politicians, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, have expressed concerns about the proposed alliance and said they'll be watching its structure closely. In a statement to Time, Warren said the PGA was "selling out to the Saudi regime to draw attention from its atrocious human rights record with a new golf monopoly."

Blumenthal said in a statement, "The PGA Tour has spent two years lambasting Saudi sports-washing and paying lip service [to] the integrity of the sport of golf, which will now be used unabashedly by the Kingdom to distract from its many crimes. The PGA Tour has placed a price on human rights and betrayed the long history of sports and athletes that advocate for social change and progress. I will keep a close eye on the structure of this deal and its implications."

It could be months before the alliance between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF is finalized, if it's approved at all -- passed by the policy board, signed off on by lawmakers, cleared by the DOJ and of course, if the terms are as described. There's also the possibility of the Saudis making the biggest leverage play of all: a Trojan horse and leaving the PGA Tour and DP World Tour alone at the altar.

"I'm choosing the bullish side of this thing," Ogilvy said. "If it is how it could be, it could be incredible. I feel like [PIF is] in it for the long haul. I mean, if they hang around with their checkbook, it future-proofs it a little bit. This arms race of how much money can we pay all these players, the PGA Tour was going to lose eventually. So, to come together, however that looks in the end surely is better than bickering about it and pulling half the good players over there and half the good players over there.

"Nobody wins when that happens."

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Many PGA Tour Sponsors Do Business in Saudi Arabia. So What Was Wrong With This One?

• Author: Alex Miceli

In November 2022, the FIFA World Cup trophy visited Saudi Arabia just ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Organized in partnership with the Saudi Ministry of Sports and Saudi Arabian Football Federation, the two-day trophy tour was sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Coke also sponsored the FIFA Fan Festival in Riyadh, due to its close partnership with the Saudi Ministry of Sports and the Saudi Arabian Football federation.

The fact that Coca-Cola sells its products in Saudi Arabia is not a surprise, as the beverage is in over 200 countries, but the thought that selling to the Kingdom could invalidate their relationship with the PGA Tour would be astonishing.

According to a story by Adam Schupak of Golfweek , the PGA Tour took the incredible step of deciding not to sign a title sponsorship deal with Raytheon Technologies because the company had received approval from the State Department to sell 300 MIM-104E Patriot missiles made by the company to Saudi Arabia.

Just to clarify, the MIM-104E Patriot is a defense system used to track and intercept targets, i.e. an anti-missile system.

The event Raytheon would have sponsored is the AT&T Byron Nelson, which just wrapped up outside Dallas.

It seems that AT&T was looking for an exit and the defense contractor headquartered in Arlington, Va., was more than willing to oblige—right up until the point the Tour apparently said no.

In 2021, John Deere supplied power generators to the Winter at Tantora Festival in Saudi Arabia .

That same year, FedEx Corp announced an investment of $400 million into the Saudi economy for the next 10 years.

At the time, the Memphis-based company reaffirmed the company’s commitment to the country’s non-oil economic growth, in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 goals.

Royal Bank of Canada was part of the Aramco IPO in 2019 and BMW has at least four showrooms in the Kingdom .

Those companies have been PGA Tour sponsors for years, but what if PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan used the Raytheon philosophy when negotiating those deals?

So why was the Raytheon deal a no-go? The Tour declined Sports Illustrated's request for a response about what happened with Raytheon and why the deal was nixed.

What type of due diligence causes the Tour to decide that a multi-billion-dollar company is not appropriate enough to be the title sponsor of a Tour event because of its relationship with an important ally in the Middle East?

Is it because the Tour is in the middle of a lawsuit with the Private Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia?

The Tour was in bed with Allen Stanford and his Stanford Financial Group , which cost its own players millions because the Texan was running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

Where was the outrage and moral indignation then?

The Tour's response by then-commissioner Tim Finchem was "we have no comment regarding the situation with Allen Stanford and certain of his companies at this time. However, we want to categorically state that the PGA Tour event in Memphis will be played as scheduled this year."

Eventually we learned that David Toms, Vijay Singh and Henrik Stenson lost millions through the Stanford scheme.

Deutsche Bank was a title sponsor of one of the playoff events outside of Boston from 2003 through 2018.

According to a Department of Justice press release from January 2021, between 2009 and 2016, Deutsche Bank and its employees violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by serving as an intermediary for bribes to foreign officials and others to unfairly obtain and retain lucrative business projects overseas.

The DOJ fined the company $130 million.

It's hard to understand the logic behind where a Raytheon is shunned by the folks in Ponte Vedra, but individuals like Allen Stanford and companies like Deutsche Bank are welcomed with open arms.

This may look like a Saudi vs. PGA Tour issue, but it’s much more than that.

Spurning a large defense company that is providing legitimate products and services to an important ally is good business because ... ?

I guess that’s the point, we don’t even know what the "because" is, which makes this even more concerning.

I’m not questioning whether the commissioner or the PGA Tour Policy Board can make such a decision, I’m questioning the process and the philosophy behind it.

That's what is most concerning, because it now seems decisions are being made not on what’s best for the Tour, but on emotion while motivated by personal animus.

This cannot be the best way to run a Tour and it will only prolong the rift that has engulfed professional golf.

It’s a rift that everyone on both sides believes needs to be mended for professional golf to move forward, but it’s clear that a decision like the one regarding Raytheon only serves to protract any type of meaningful movement toward a resolution.

A nation must think before it acts.

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The Long Game: Saudi Arabia and Professional Golf

• Sean L. Yom
• June 21, 2023
• Middle East Program

Bottom Line

• The alliance between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (which is chaired by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and includes the LIV Golf league) is a strategic victory for Saudi Arabia, which has sought a more integrated presence in global and Western institutions.
• The merger opens up serious commercial leverage for Saudi Arabia, including control over the PGA Tour’s lucrative licensing operation. 
• The deal has resolved a year-long legal dispute between the two organizations, but questions will be raised about the PGA Tour’s nonprofit status as well as monopoly issues that are being investigated by the US Congress.

When the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour commenced in 2022, most observers dismissed the spectacle as sportswashing . Sportswashing refers to sponsorship by authoritarian regimes over major sporting teams and events in order to elevate their image. Last year, LIV fit the bill. It was financed to the tune of $2 billion by Saudi Arabia’s $700 billion sovereign wealth fund (the Public Investment Fund, or PIF), and created exhibition-style golfing events featuring players lured away from the PGA Tour by lucrative cash payouts. Against the LIV stood the PGA Tour, the $1.5 billion sanctioning body based in the United States that traditionally organizes competitions, signs sponsors, licenses media, and pays cash purses at events. 

The PGA and LIV embarked upon an ugly feud fought out in the Western media and American courts. The battle ended recently with the shocking news that the two had agreed to instead merge their forces—alongside the smaller DP World Tour (formerly known as the PGA European Tour, now sponsored by the UAE’s state-owned DP World cargo and port company )—to “ unify ” the professional game under one organizational umbrella. Many Western observers have reacted with hostility . They frame the move as an upstart effort by Saudi Arabia to control global sporting by essentially buying out Western golf to conceal its poor human rights record, one pockmarked by the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals and the families of the victims from those terrorist attacks allege that those hijackers received Saudi government assistance. Congressional scrutiny has followed, as the merger raises antitrust issues . The Justice Department has also signaled it will investigate the deal , bringing forward the possibility that the merger may not happen after all.

Even if it falls through, however, the merger demands attention in how it has invoked political and strategic concerns that extend far beyond the game of golf. The PGA Tour-Saudi deal is not just sportswashing. The merger entails the Saudi government not buying the PGA Tour outright, but rather going into business with it by funding a new private enterprise to co-manage its commercial empire, of which the biggest components are corporate sponsorships, licensing deals, media rights, and digital assets. It also reflects an accelerating adaptation of the richest Gulf monarchies to the world’s changing geopolitical landscape. Saudi Arabia intends to draw considerable long-term profit from this business relationship, in line with its broader strategy—shared with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—of carving out permanent spots at the global cultural table. Gone are the days when unfamiliar foreigners, when asked about these kingdoms, would conjure up Orientalist images of camel-riding tribal sheikhs splurging newfound black gold on garish Beverly Hills mansions. The agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund instead shows the Saudis as something else: savvy businesspersons using their oil wealth to create new financial and political opportunities, even if this rankles Western audiences.

Sportswashing is hardly new. The Olympic Games have sometimes graced unsavory autocracies eager to hide their heinous domestic political practices (think Germany in 1936 or China in 2008). Over the past decade, the leading Gulf kingdoms have kicked their sportswashing campaigns into overdrive. The trend took off after the 2011–2012 Arab Spring, when these regimes were eager to rebrand themselves from what they were—illiberal ruling monarchies lucky to have survived that regional wave of revolutionary uprisings. Instead, they sought to remake themselves as international sites of progressive, cosmopolitan knowledge . They craved cultural legitimacy, or in marketing terms “brand equity” that could anoint cities like Jeddah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha as global centerpieces of education, tourism, and investment. This occurred during the 2010s despite regional affairs deteriorating. Saudi Arabia and the UAE orchestrated a humanitarian disaster with their Yemeni intervention; crackdowns on opposition proliferated in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia; and Qatari abuses of migrant workers building the 2022 World Cup stadiums became too grotesque to hide.

Still, such nation-branding efforts , also known as “soft power” projection, yielded considerable fruit. For instance, elite Western universities created branch campuses in Qatar and the UAE, and the latter has hosted the French Louvre since 2017. Above all, glamorous sporting events and music concerts began gracing these countries, as well as Saudi Arabia. The FIFA World Cup, F1 Racing, World Wrestling Entertainment, mixed-martial arts, championship boxing, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney, and Madonna—this is the lexicon of cultural globalization, and over the past decade the Arabian Peninsula has become part of it. 

One successful result of such soft-power projection has been the close relationship between the Gulf and football. Qatar’s successful hosting of the 2022 World Cup triggered ferocious outcry among some Western observers, partly driven by discomfort over how such a tiny country with little footballing history could pursue its global ambitions by organizing a sporting event of this magnitude. Previously, however, Gulf royals had also purchased top-tier European football clubs , marking their entry into the highest levels of the sport’s global competition. The Emir of Qatar owns Paris Saint-Germain; Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, son of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, owns Manchester City; and the Saudi PIF also owns Newcastle United. Gulf airlines like Emirates Airways are ubiquitous sponsors of prestigious clubs like Real Madrid. Finally, football fans know well that Saudi Arabia’s own football league has spent billions to tempt stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, and Lionel Messi (although the latter is now heading to Florida, to play his twilight years for David Beckham’s Inter Miami club).

It is tempting to see the PGA Tour-Saudi deal as the latest iteration of sportswashing. But the deal concerns far more than Saudi financiers snapping up yet another expensive Western sporting asset. If the merger passes US government review, then the PIF – and by extension, the Saudi government under Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who both chairs the PIF and will serve as the next Saudi king—will help direct a new private firm (thus far called “Newco”) in charge of these golf tours’ combined business. While the implications of the merger are still emerging, the end result promises to bridge two different worlds. The PGA Tour will remain the historical face of professional golf, but the financial muscle needed for its day-to-day commerce will come from the PIF, which alongside the PGA Tour will operate Newco. 

The upshot will be unprecedented in the typically staid world of golfing. Every monetizable implication of the PGA Tour’s gargantuan operations, from signing media deals and licensing video games to drawing tournament revenues and running players clubs, will generate profit for the two entities in charge of Newco—the PGA Tour and the PIF. The Saudis are not buying a golf tour, or even a golfer; they are capitalizing the game into a new commercial form.

Much of this novel strategy turns on the fractious nature of golf itself. For one, the PGA Tour is technically a tax-exempt non-profit enterprise based in Florida. Moreover, there are no teams to buy. Professional golfers are independent contractors, and the game itself has long been the elite preserve of mostly white men belonging to upper-class Western institutions. For another, the PGA Tour carries hallowed status among golf fans. While the four major tournaments—the Open Championship (or British Open), US Open, PGA Championship, and the Masters—are technically independent, and smaller regional outfits like the European DP Tour and the Asian Tour regulate their respective domains, the PGA Tour packs the biggest punch in terms of cachet and credibility for aspiring golfers, tournament organizers, and corporate patrons. All the global golf icons familiar to non-golfing fans, from Tiger Woods to Jack Nicklaus, are tied to the PGA Tour. By contrast, despite its superstar lineup, the LIV Tour failed to draw much mainstream attention. Its television ratings were dismal, and the only US broadcast network to air its events was CW, better known for its teen-themed superhero shows like Superman & Lois .

Still, the PGA Tour saw the LIV as a brazen Saudi-funded affront to its monopoly last year. Not only did some celebrated golfers like Phil Mickelson surrender their PGA Tour membership in favor of LIV thanks to astronomical signing bonuses, but both the PGA and LIV waged costly lawsuits against one another in federal courts . In the end, Saudi money won. The PGA Tour admitted that the cost of its litigation, plus ever-rising cash payouts designed to prevent more players from defecting to LIV, was the final straw: it simply could not defeat “ a foreign government with unlimited funds .” That congressional review now appears imminent is also ironic given PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s complaint that the PGA Tour received little US government support last year amidst its anti-LIV lawsuits and mounting operational costs, ostensibly due to Washington’s “ complex geopolitical alliance ” with Riyadh. 

For Saudi Arabia, the move marks a remarkable victory. In business terms, the PIF was hemorrhaging funds to underwrite its laughingstock golf tour. Making long-term profit was more important than beating the PGA Tour into submission, and now it will have a hand in guiding the business side of the game. In geopolitical terms, the venture reflects the Gulf’s positioning amidst the new realities of a multipolar world. Muhammad bin Salman, much like his counterparts in Qatar and the UAE, understands that US hegemony is waning. The military backbone of the American alliance with these kingdoms remains solid: Washington still maintains a massive infrastructure of bases across the Gulf littoral, and most of these Gulf kingdoms’ most advanced weaponry still originates from American firms. Yet America’s fading appetite for war, particularly with Iran, has convinced Gulf rulers that their foreign policies must be far more flexible in engaging a multipolar world where Chinese interests, Russian security, and global energy markets matter more than American opinions. 

The signs of such flexibility have been apparent for years. For instance, the Gulf kingdoms have repeatedly rebuffed US pressures to ramp up oil production, while Saudi Arabia astonished many last March when it agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Iran through Chinese mediation . The UAE’s efforts to normalize ties with Israel and also de-escalate tensions with Iran show a similarly pragmatic desire to stamp its own influence upon regional affairs, while exploring greater engagement with China as well. Such moves are not merely affronts to the Biden administration so much as outcomes of new Gulf foreign policymaking, one that is far more confident and adaptable than before. In step with ongoing nation-branding efforts, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf peers do not merely desire prestige; they want permanence . They are making their kingdoms central to global discussions about sporting, tourism, trade, and education—not by building vast militaries, but through increasingly savvy cultural and financial forays far beyond their borders. 

Much as the Gulf kingdoms have pivoted to embrace these new opportunities, Western audiences must also adapt. Such strategic responses, however, are still being calibrated given the novelty of this new reality. Western critics of sportswashing likewise need a stronger argument than human rights when evaluating partnerships between foreign autocracies and Western sporting leagues. The NBA, for instance, does $5 billion in business in China, which has become its second biggest market after North America. Because much professional sporting based in the West flourishes through competitive markets, there is little that can be done when Gulf financing enters the domestic picture through legal investment channels. The Saudi PIF’s takeover of Newcastle United in 2021, for instance, unfolded despite tenacious resistance from many club fans. Western governments cannot outright block such involvement, unless the funding appears tied to a foreign government under sanction (which explains why English football club Chelsea’s Russian ownership sold the team in 2022). 

In the case of the PGA Tour, the threat of US government review is anchored upon the possibility that the business structure of the proposed merged golfing entity may breach American antitrust laws, not because the source of funding is Saudi. However this deal pans out, one thing is clear: Gulf financing has irrevocably become an important new player in Western sporting, and it will have lasting influence.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities. 

Image: State Department

Rory McIlroy says his ‘future’ is with PGA Tour after report of LIV offer

Responding to a report that he was “close” to a big-money deal with LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy said Tuesday that there was no truth to it and that he has never received an offer from the three-year-old venture.

“I’ll play the PGA Tour the rest of my career,” McIlroy declared.

In an interview with Golf Channel while in Hilton Head Island, S.C., for this week’s Heritage tournament, McIlroy also reiterated his desire to see the PGA Tour and LIV find a way for their players to face each other more often. One of those rare occasions unfolded last week at the Masters, where defending champion Jon Rahm played against his former PGA Tour colleagues for the first time since defecting to LIV.

Rahm is thought to have received a contract worth well into nine figures to join the Saudi Arabia-backed league. According to a report Sunday from City A.M. , a business-focused media platform based in London, McIlroy was offered $850 million to leave the PGA Tour.

City A.M. reported that McIlroy also was offered 2 percent equity in LIV. The 34-year-old native of Northern Ireland, who has softened his stance on LIV after initially being its most vocal critic among PGA players, said Tuesday he did not “know how these things get started.”

“I’ve never been offered a number from LIV, and I’ve never contemplated going to LIV,” he said. “Again, I think I’ve made it clear over the past two years that I don’t think it’s something for me.

“It doesn’t mean that I judge people who have went and played over there,” McIlroy continued. “I think one of the things that I have realized over the past two years is people can make their own decisions for whatever they think is best for themselves, and who are we to judge them for that?”

Exclusive: Rory McIlroy tells @ToddLewisGC that LIV Golf rumors are false and, "I will play the PGA Tour for the rest of my career." Tune into Golf Today at 5 p.m. EDT for more. pic.twitter.com/PIPAWMIWGh — Golf Central (@GolfCentral) April 16, 2024

The PGA Tour in June announced plans to partner with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund , which owns LIV Golf. But the circuits are still conducting their business separately. A Dec. 31 deadline for details to be ratified was extended as talks continue, but amid little sign of a deal, players from both sides have expressed concern that golf fans are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the current state of affairs.

After McIlroy said recently that it was “unsustainable” for golf’s highest level to run on parallel tracks, LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau asserted that an alliance between the circuits needed to happen “quicker rather than later just for the good of the sport.”

With 13 LIV players participating in the Masters, DeChambeau had the lead after the first round and finished tied for sixth with another LIV star, Cameron Smith. They were among just eight players to post a total score below par in a tournament won convincingly by the PGA Tour’s Scottie Scheffler, who was described Tuesday by McIlroy as “hands down the best player in the game right now.”

Of the rival circuit’s roster, McIlroy told Golf Channel that there were “obviously some really good players on LIV who would be a great addition to the field this week [at Hilton Head], and they’re not here, and that’s unfortunate.”

“I think the game is way better with all of us together,” he added.

In February 2022, after DeChambeau and some other big-name golfers pledged loyalty to the PGA Tour, McIlroy said LIV Golf was “dead in the water.” The start-up league launched that year and steadily pilfered prominent players, then made a statement about its possible staying power by luring Rahm in December. Less than a month later, McIlroy said LIV was “part of our sport now,” and in February his former agent suggested McIlroy’s changed public stance could be a precursor to a big-money move to the league. Asked about that then, McIlroy said with a chuckle, “You never know — he might know a few things.”

On Tuesday, McIlroy struck an emphatic note about where he intended to play golf.

“My future is here on the PGA Tour,” he said.

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LIV Golf continues to add to roster, another sign it believes it is here for long term

LIV Golf announced several executive hires Wednesday, another sign the Saudi-backed golf league believes it is here for the long term.

David Phillips has been named chief financial officer. Ross Hallett is the new head of events. Katie O’Reilly heads team business operations. Tim Taylor will lead LIV Golf’s London office. Pam Sacree is the head of human resources.

The new executive positions will be based in either LIV’s New York or London offices.

LIV's main offices are in West Palm Beach and London.

Phillips was the chief financial officer of the Equinox Group. Hallett was a senior vice-president and head of golf events for IMG. O'Reilly was the chief revenue officer for the Philadelphia 76ers, and was named one of Sports Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 in 2024.

"LIV Golf is building a global organization with a team of talented professionals whose excellence is rivaled only by our players on the course,” said LIV CEO and commissioner Greg Norman, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens.

“We’re proud to continue building on our tremendous success so far with the addition of top-flight executives across our business divisions. Our players, our team franchises and our growing staff are laser-focused on the league’s long term future, supporting the game, attracting more fans to the sport that we love, and establishing a truly international golf league.”

More: Scottie Scheffler blames state of the game of golf on LIV golfers | D'Angelo

Negotiations between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour are into their 11th month since a framework agreement announced in June that would combine their commercial businesses and rights into a new for-profit company.

Many speculated then that LIV — which is owned and bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund — could be eliminated when (and if) a deal is finalized. But in October, Norman told a small group of reporters the league will continue to grow and exist separately from the PGA Tour.

LIV then backed that up less than two months later with the stunning signing of Jon Rahm , which was followed by adding Tyrrell Hatton. The league then expanded from 12 to 13 teams.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said at The Players Championship in March negotiations with Y asir Al-Rumayyan, the man behind the PIF, were accelerating.

Last week at the Masters, Tiger Woods said a meeting held in the Bahamas following The Players and attended by PGA Tour Policy Board members, Monahan and Al-Rumayyan, was “positive” but added he did not believe the sides are any closer to a deal.

Woods is a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board.

Tom D'Angelo is a senior sports columnist and golf writer for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Tiger woods makes first public comments on meeting with saudi pif head yasir al-rumayyan, share this article.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods said negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund are headed in the right direction.

Following his final-round 5-over 77 at Augusta National Golf Club on Sunday, Woods was asked about meeting Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, at his residence in the Bahamas on March 18.

“I don’t know if we’re closer, but certainly we’re headed in the right direction,” he said. “That was a very positive meeting, and I think both sides came away from the meeting feeling positive.”

It was on June 6 that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Al-Rumayyan stunned the world with news that they had signed off on a framework agreement to stop litigation and create a for-profit business together. But the deadline to make a deal by the end of the year was extended and progress has been slow as the Tour focused on drafting new governance policies and forged a relationship with the private equity group SSG , who made an initial investment in PGA Tour Enterprises of at least $1.5 billion.

Woods and Al-Rumayyan played golf on the Albany course near Nassau where Woods hosts the Hero World Challenge.

The meeting included all six player directors. In addition to Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Jordan Spieth were also there, along with board liaison Joe Ogilvie.

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Saudi Arabia's futuristic $500 billion Neom megacity just got a lot smaller... for now, report says

• Saudi Arabia has cut estimates for people living in its $500 billion Neom project.
• Its government hoped the futuristic "The Line" city would hold 1.5 million by 2030.
• Now, fewer than 300,000 are expected to live there by then, officials said, per Bloomberg.

Saudi Arabia has cut estimates for the number of people living in its Neom megacity project by 2030.

Its government had previously said it wanted 1.5 million residents to be moved into the project's futuristic city, "The Line," by then, Bloomberg reported.

But that number is now likely to be fewer than 300,000, the Bloomberg report said, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

Billed as a "cognitive city," The Line is set to stretch over 170 kilometers (roughly 105 miles) of desert to the Red Sea in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.

But just 2.4 kilometers (around 1.5 miles) of that is expected to be completed by 2030, the person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The $500 billion Neom megacity, which will cover 26,500 square kilometers (just over 10,200 square miles), is part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil and pivot toward tech and innovation.

It is set to feature glow-in-the-dark beaches, ski slopes, an artificial moon, robot butlers, and flying taxis, according to glossy brochures and public statements by its planners .

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But human rights activists have raised fears that the grandiose plans reflect not just Crown Prince Mohammed's ambition but his refusal to tolerate challenges to his power.

Experts told Business Insider in 2023 that the city could be fitted with Chinese technology to gather data on residents as part of a sweeping surveillance program. Others raised concern about the harsh punishments meted out to Saudi critics of the project, with Business Insider reporting last year that a woman was jailed for 30 years for criticizing the plans on social media.

Neom is just one of several "gigaprojects" underway as part of this plan.

The country's Public Investment Fund (PIF), its sovereign wealth fund, has long shouldered the large financial burden imposed by such projects — which are estimated to run at tens of billions of dollars each.

But the PIF said in January that its cash as of September had dropped to the lowest level since December 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported.

And that has forced the government to turn to a tactic it hasn't used for a long time to boost its funds — borrowing, per the report. It has also been reported that the kingdom plans to sell more shares in the state oil company Saudi Aramco this year.

The Saudi ruler has used a range of tactics to rebuild his global influence and reshape Saudi Arabia since the 2018 murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, which almost resulted in him being made a pariah on the world stage.

Alongside economic megaprojects, Saudi Arabia has also thrown money into other areas, such as sports.

The Guardian estimated in July 2023 that the kingdom had spent at least $6.3 billion on sports deals since 2021, from funding a giant merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to prying a host of global soccer stars away from European leagues on huge salaries.

"It's mind-boggling the amount of stuff that's trying to be done here," Tim Callen, a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute think tank, told The Journal.

Watch: The true cost of the lithium mining boom powering electric cars

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Tiger Woods on PGA Tour-LIV Golf talks: ‘Headed in the right direction’

A UGUSTA, Ga. — On Sunday after his round, Tiger Woods was asked for the first time about the recent meeting that took place between the PGA Tour and its player advisory council (of which he is a member) and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund boss Yasir Al-Rumayyan in an effort to bring the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to some shared agreement.

Since the much-publicized “framework agreement” that was announced on June 6 last year, little progress has been made to bring the sides together.

The meeting took place the day after the Players Championship in March at Woods’ home in the Bahamas, where Woods played 18 holes with Al-Rumayyan.

Other PGA Tour Policy Board members Jordan Spieth, Adam Scott, Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson were also in attendance.

“We’re headed in the right direction,’’ Woods said Sunday. “I don’t know if we’re closer [to a deal], but certainly we’re headed in the right direction. That was a very positive meeting, and I think both sides came away from the meeting feeling positive.”

Among the obstacles to any deal include how to compensate PGA Tour players who remained loyal to the tour and turned down offers to sign with the Saudi-backed league and how to incorporate LIV’s team format.

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Ethical considerations drowned out as Adelaide’s LIV affair continues

More in South Australia are seemingly able to turn the other way and view the Saudi-backed rebel golf tour’s presence as a boon for the sport

A s LIV golf returns to Adelaide next week, Australia’s appetite for the breakaway tour appears stronger than anywhere in the world. The South Australian capital has been the most successful venue in the short history of the tour, and there are few signs that any ethical misgivings about the tour’s Saudi backers have diminished that popularity.

The manner of the challenger brand’s ingratiation of Australian officials, players and spectators serves as a model for LIV, particularly as the mooted merger with the PGA Tour shows little sign of delivering a united sport. The 2024 event, which gets under way on Friday 26 April, is therefore significant.

The existing deal with SA covers this year’s event, plus two more, and the state’s premier, Peter Malinauskas, has trumpeted its success. He has acknowledged the ethical misgivings about LIV, but has ploughed on anyway. The state “went out on a limb”, he told ABC last year, “and provided LIV Golf their breakthrough moment globally”.

Public discussion of the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, which has bankrolled LIV’s rapid establishment through the country’s Public Investment Fund, has largely fallen away, but amid the South Australian backslapping there are still some who are pushing back. The Liberal opposition leader, David Speirs, has been opposed to the event since its announcement, and continues to criticise Malinauskas on the decision to host the event due to the links to Saudi Arabia.

But more in Australia are seemingly able to turn the other way, and view LIV’s presence as a boon for the sport. Golf Australia’s chief executive, James Sutherland, said last month this part of the world looks at LIV differently. “There’s clearly an ‘anti’ or a conservative sentiment about the Saudis in the US, and the further east you go on a world map from America, the more moderate the views are,” he told the SportNXT conference in a room featuring many of Australian sport’s senior executives.

Golf Australia’s close collaborator is the PGA of Australia, the body representing tournament and club professionals and organiser of the Australasian Tour, which is still aligned with LIV rival the DP World Tour. Despite the political complexity, Sutherland was matter of fact. “The Australian public just wants to embrace great talent in that golf sphere that ordinarily wouldn’t come to Australia.”

Indeed, the most vocal local criticism of LIV’s Adelaide event last year was not about the crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia or the country’s repression of women , but rather the impact the event had on the condition of the host course.

Sutherland’s comments highlight the region’s appetite for the sport which – due to the PGA Tour’s historical dominance – has largely focused on audiences in the US and, to a lesser extent, Europe. They suggest LIV’s formula is, at least in Australia, working, despite close connections between Australia’s golf establishment and the DP World Tour, which alongside the PGA Tour in the US has been at loggerheads with LIV.

The appeal of LIV in Adelaide is simple. Never before has such an expensive collection of golfing talent been taken to Australia’s fifth-largest city. Last year 77,000 tickets were sold, roughly double the estimated attendance of LIV’s next most popular event (figures are not formally reported).

Although LIV has demonstrated its almost unlimited financial resources in the pursuit of players, the taxpayers of SA have paid – in money and time – for the privilege of hosting. The exact amount has been kept under wraps, with the government refusing to detail the deal in parliament.

The deep pockets of the breakaway tour have been regarded as its greatest power. December’s deal for John Rahm – reported to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars – underscores LIV’s long-term financial commitment, close to two years after it initially picked off its opening lineup.

But last year’s Adelaide event – although managed by LIV’s operating partner Performance 54 (another PIF-backed entity) – was only pulled off thanks to the help of more than 700 unpaid helpers. A similar callout is under way this year.

LIV has reportedly offered millions in site fees to clubs in the US to host the tournament . But no such windfall has come the way of Australian host, the Grange Golf Club.

T he Grange sits close to the beach not far from Adelaide’s CBD, and is approaching its 100th year. Its financial results for last year show no specific revenue spikes attributed to LIV, and the largest unexplained growth in a single line item was a $350,000 increase in “sundry income”. However, the documents describe a healthy club, boosted by more than $300,000 in additional bar and catering profit, a reduction in the club’s debt and a membership fee increase that was below inflation.

The club is not looking to be handsomely compensated, according to the general manger of the course, Barry Linke. He said hosting the event delivered multiple benefits, although the precise terms of the agreement with LIV were commercial in confidence. “[There were] improved playing conditions for members due to the additional maintenance and work done on the golf course – in 2023 we spent twice as much on course maintenance as a normal year,” he said.

“There is a financial benefit, improved infrastructure, worldwide recognition to the Grange, increase in membership inquiry and demand, increase in visiting player revenue, and improved club reciprocal opportunities for our members.”

The announcement of the Grange as LIV’s Australian host came in late 2022, but not out of the blue. One of its two courses is designed by LIV commissioner Greg Norman, and the club was the site of his first professional victory in 1976. He even has a testimonial on the club’s website.

Grange reported 86% of members were satisfied with the LIV event, even though it interfered with access to the course. One member of 45 years went to the local newspaper complaining about the damage hosting LIV had caused. Not long after, his scorecard was leaked by another Grange member seemingly unhappy with the dissent. The X account that posted the hacker’s card said the complainant “should probably worry more about the state of his golf game than the state of the course”.

LIV’s divisive attack on world golf and sensitivities around the source of its wealth may linger in these debates. But they suggest SA’s long-ignored golfing community may be less concerned with the death of Jamal Khashoggi, and more with the condition of a course.

Speirs said the opposition party maintains its anti-LIV stance while the rebel event “remains under the control of the Saudi regime, which is notorious for sports-washing in order to cover up the deplorable mistreatment and basic rights violations of women”. That position means, come 26 April, the spectre of Saudi Arabia’s influence will not have been extinguished entirely amid the beats and beers along Grange’s exclusive fairways. But, like Chase Koepka on last year’s party hole, that sentiment is likely to be drowned out.

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LIV Golf signals intent with five new arrivals after Tiger Woods admission over PGA Tour talks

The future of LIV Golf appeared in the up in the air following an agreement between the PGA Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, but the breakaway league look here to say

• 15:46, 17 Apr 2024
• Updated 16:15, 17 Apr 2024

LIV Golf have announced five new appointments as part of their executive team, as the breakaway league's bosses remain in negotiation with their PGA Tour rivals.

On Wednesday, LIV confirmed that they had made a number of changes upstairs, including the appointment of a new Chief Financial Officer in David Phillipps. Elsewhere, Ross Hallett has been appointed Head of Events, whilst Katie O’Reilly has taken on the role of Head of Team Business Operations.

Two other changes have seen Pam Sacree appointed Head of Human Resources, whilst Tim Taylor will take over the running of the Saudi-backed circuit's UK HQ in London.

Tiger Woods recently declared talks with the PGA Tour are "heading in the right direction" as both parties look to shape the future of golf. But LIV's latest moves behind the scenes give a clear indication of the fact the league plans to go from strength to strength whatever the outcome of the reorganisation of the golf ecosystem.

READ MORE: Rory McIlroy prioritises golf 'traditions' despite LIV links and Jon Rahm's frustration shows why

READ MORE: Brooks Koepka sets sights on growing LIV Golf dynasty - all with the help of Graeme McDowell

The future of the breakaway league had been in up in the air amid the groundbreaking agreement between the PGA Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), which was announced last June. Tour commissioner Jay Monahan who is at the centre of the peace deal reiterated that the agreement is not part of a 'merger' with the LIV setup.

"Let me be clear that despite numerous reports," Monahan said last summer. "This arrangement is not a merger between the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the PIF. The PIF will be a minority investor." Doubt was also cast after LIV CEO Greg Norman played no part in the initial negotiations that saw the two rivals announced their framework agreement on June 6.

The five new executive additions on Wednesday indicated the breakaway league has no plans of going anywhere, any time soon. This was a point emphasised by former world No. 1 Norman, who claimed last October that he had 'zero' concerns about the long-term future of LIV Golf.

For all the latest on news, politics, sports, and showbiz from the USA, go to The Mirror US .

"I knew exactly the investment into LIV and the long-term ability of the franchises, and the valuation of each one of these franchises," he commented. "The money was always going to be invested in that and it will continue to be invested in that. I knew LIV was always going to exist."

10 months on from the June 6 announcement, the PGA Tour remains in negotiations with PIF despite some concerns over the future of the deal. In March, representatives from the PGA Tour - including Tiger Woods - met with members of the PIF in a positive step for the future of professional golf.

Speaking at last week's Masters, Woods revealed that the meeting between the two sides last month was a 'positive' one. “I don’t know if we’re closer but certainly we’re headed in the right direction. That was a very positive meeting, and I think both sides came away from the meeting feeling positive.”

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Saudi-backed LIV Golf, PGA Tour file joint motion to dismiss lawsuits

FILE - Signage for LIV Golf is displayed during the pro-am round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, NJ., Thursday, July 28, 2022. The most disruptive year in golf ended Tuesday, June 6, 2023, when the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia’s golf interests, creating a commercial operation designed to unify professional golf around the world.(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - Yasir Al-Rumayyan attends the champion’s ceremony at the LIV Golf Invitational-Chicago tournament Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022, in Sugar Hill, Ill. The most disruptive year in golf ended Tuesday, June 6, 2023, when the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia’s golf interests, creating a commercial operation designed to unify professional golf around the world. Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will join the board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operates its tournaments. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

FILE - PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan speaks during a news conference before the start of the Travelers Championship golf tournament at TPC River Highlands, Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in Cromwell, Conn. The most disruptive year in golf ended Tuesday, June 6, 2023, when the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia’s golf interests, creating a commercial operation designed to unify professional golf around the world.(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

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Saudi-backed LIV Golf and the PGA Tour filed a motion late Friday to dismiss their antitrust lawsuit and countersuits, ending more than 10 months and enormous legal fees in a bitter dispute that turned into a business agreement.

The filing in a northern California federal court was more procedural than a surprise.

It was a big part of the stunning June 6 agreement in which the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the PGA Tour and the European tour became partners in a new for-profit company for commercial businesses.

The PGA Tour sent a notice to players, which was obtained by The Associated Press, that said, “Pursuant to the Framework Agreement announced last week, documents have now been filed with the court bringing a formal end to all pending litigation between the PGA Tour, PIF and LIV Golf.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported that tour executives told the staff legal fees were closing in on $50 million. As part of the motion, all sides are responsible for their legal fees.

Along with ending the antitrust complaints against each other, the motion asks for dismissal of an appeal involving whether the PIF and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, would have to provide testimony.

The PIF and Al-Rumayyan were trying to claim an exemption from the Foreign Service Immunity Act. A federal magistrate had ruled they were not exempt because of the PIF’s involvement in the commercial enterprise of LIV Golf.

All requests were to dismiss with prejudice, meaning neither side’s lawsuit can be reopened.

Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau were among 11 players who sued the PGA Tour in early August when they were suspended for defecting to LIV Golf. The rival league paid signing fees of $100 million or more, in addition to the $25 million in prize money for 48-man fields with guaranteed money at every tournament.

The lawsuit claimed the PGA Tour has used monopoly power to try to squash competition. The PGA Tour won an early court decision when a federal judge denied a temporary restraining order that would have let three LIV Golf players to compete in the tour’s postseason.

LIV Golf joined the lawsuit and eventually all 11 players pulled out of the lawsuit.

The PGA Tour filed a countersuit in September accusing LIV of “tortious interference” by inducing top players to breach contracts by claiming the tour could not enforce its rules.

Any jury trial was not expected until the middle of 2024 at the earliest as both sides wrangled over discovery issues.

But the case is not done yet. The New York Times earlier on Friday filed a motion to intervene, asking the court to unseal documents. The Times says the public’s right to the information outweighs the tour and LIV Golf’s claims certain documents could cause “competitive harm.”

That request is to be heard on Aug. 3.

Also, the Justice Department has begun to examine the agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s Saudi backers to determine whether it violates federal antitrust statutes. The agreement contained few details on how the new company will operate and what becomes of LIV Golf, which is in its second season.

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Saudi Arabia Relishes a Triumph That Transcends Sports

The deal to merge LIV Golf with the PGA Tour is a big win for the oil-rich kingdom, headlining a banner week that also includes a visit from the American secretary of state.

By Vivian Nereim and Ahmed Al Omran

Vivian Nereim reported this article from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Ahmed Al Omran from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

When a Saudi-backed upstart golf league began recruiting high-profile players from the top U.S. circuit, the American tour’s commissioner lamented a “foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf.”

The commissioner, Jay Monahan, who heads the PGA Tour, sniped at players who left for the new league , LIV Golf, hinting at the stain that the Saudi government’s human rights violations would leave on them. But on Tuesday, Mr. Monahan sat smiling with the head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund to announce that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf were forming what promises to be a lucrative partnership .

“I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” Mr. Monahan said later. “But circumstances do change.”

The deal, if it goes forward, represents an enormous victory for Saudi Arabia and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in a bid to become a major player in global sports, giving the kingdom considerable sway over the game of golf. But the significance of the moment transcends sports, as Saudi Arabia under Prince Mohammed seeks greater political influence in the Middle East and beyond.

Over the past weeks, Saudi Arabia has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity, and some successes, including the opening of an embassy of its longtime regional rival, Iran, as the two countries move toward restoring normal relations .

And the golf deal is only the capstone of a busy week in which Prince Mohammed is hosting the visiting U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, who arrived on Tuesday night.

Mr. Blinken represents another once-vocal critic of the kingdom, President Biden. On the campaign trail in 2020, Mr. Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi , and other human rights violations.

“I’m not going to lie. This is a moment that a lot of us are relishing,” Prince Talal Al Faisal, a Saudi businessman and royal family member, said in an interview. Like many Saudis, the prince said that he felt the stream of negative news coverage about his country was often unfair or inaccurate.

“It gets to a point where you think to yourself, OK, this is hopeless,” he said. “And a moment like this makes you think, ‘Hang on, well, if you try hard enough, you eventually get your way.’”

Five years ago, this moment would have seemed virtually impossible.

In 2018, Saudi agents murdered and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi , a Saudi exile who had fled to the United States, in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. The international condemnation was sharp, and for a brief time, it seemed like Prince Mohammed was facing isolation on the world stage.

An American intelligence assessment determined that the crown prince had likely ordered the killing, a charge he has repeatedly denied.

The murder was the peak of a broader crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia that continues today. But the icy mood did not last long.

Prince Mohammed had cultivated warm relations with President Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and weeks after the killing, the president released a statement defending the prince. It said, “We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder.”

Mr. Trump argued in the same statement that protecting the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia was essential for securing the kingdom’s cooperation on oil price, military spending and other investments in the United States.

Within months, American and European chief executives who had canceled their appearances at conferences in the kingdom quietly returned . Prince Mohammed told visitors that he was determined to forge ahead with his plan to diversify the conservative Islamic kingdom’s economy and open it up socially.

Foreign leaders began returning for visits. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which oversees about $650 billion in assets, continued to roll out high-profile investments around the world, such as LIV Golf.

As Prince Talal notes, “We are, like it or not, central to a lot of the things that happen across the globe.”

Saudi Arabia’s attempts to enter the world of golf had included an earlier approach to the PGA Tour about starting a partnership. But that approach was rebuffed, and it was only after the introduction of the rival LIV Golf last year — which provoked a bruising legal battle and eventually a series of secret meetings between PGA Tour leaders and Saudi officials — that Mr. Monahan and his lieutenants came around.

Saudis have grown accustomed to seeing their former critics reversing course.

In 2018, after Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Prince Mohammed “toxic” and a “wrecking ball,” vowing that he would never visit Saudi Arabia “as long as this guy is in charge.” Yet in April, Mr. Graham traveled to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and was photographed grinning with Prince Mohammed.

“Things in Saudi Arabia are changing very quickly for the better,” he told ABC after his visit. “His vision for the country economically is transformative.”

Indeed, in the span of five years, Prince Mohammed has made serious strides toward diversifying the oil-dependent economy, investing in mining, tourism and entertainment. Under him, the country ended a ban on women driving , significantly loosened gender segregation and even promoted electronic music raves in the desert, ripping apart ideas about what was possible in the kingdom.

“Keeping up with Saudi Arabia is not only tough for non-Saudis but for Saudis themselves,” said Bader Al-Saif, assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “This shock-and-awe approach hopes to deliver faster results than those delivered in previous waves in Saudi history,” he added.

During Mr. Blinken’s visit to the kingdom this week, he will attend a gathering of a global coalition to counter the terrorist group Islamic State. For Prince Mohammed, this summit represents another chance to demonstrate his leadership.

He has been keen to hedge against Saudi Arabia’s past dependence on the United States, its main security guarantor.

“The relationship now looks more like the way the U.S. relates to some European partners,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “Security cooperation is key and maintained by both sides, but the Saudis are flexing their muscles in an effort to become a regional and international actor of significance in a world in which power is diffused, and the U.S. picks its battles much more cautiously.”

Just days before Mr. Blinken’s arrival on Tuesday, Prince Mohammed welcomed the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, for a visit. Next week, the Saudi Ministry of Investment will host a major gathering of Arab and Chinese businesspeople.

And, at least for a few days, the kingdom can continue to bask in the glow of its golf victory.

The head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will also head the board of the new golf entity, though the PGA Tour will hold a majority of the board seats. The wealth fund has the exclusive right to invest in the new company going forward, opening the door for it to increase its stake in the years ahead.

The deal protects Mr. al-Rumayyan, a golf aficionado, from the prospect of being deposed and scrutinized in American courtrooms, a risk that had loomed over him during the legal battles that the PGA Tour and LIV golf fought before their deal.

The sovereign wealth fund has also managed to achieve quick results for its investment in the English soccer club Newcastle United, which qualified for the UEFA Champions League just 18 months after it was purchased.

Critics have accused Saudi Arabia of using its spending power in sports to distract from its poor human rights record, allegations that Saudi officials have rejected.

During his meeting with Prince Mohammed on Tuesday, Mr. Blinken “emphasized that our bilateral relationship is strengthened by progress on human rights,” Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said.

But for Saudis whose family members remain in prison, targeted in the crackdown, such words offer little comfort.

Abdullah al-Qahtani, a dual Saudi American citizen, has not heard from his father, Mohammed al-Qahtani , since October, when he disappeared shortly before he was scheduled to be released from a Saudi prison. He had been serving a 10-year prison sentence in relation to starting a human rights organization.

“It’s getting to the point where all the doors are shutting in our faces,’ the younger Mr. al-Qahtani said on Tuesday, during a virtual news conference. “What I want is to bring his issue to light, because they have to know. I know Secretary Blinken is going to be in Saudi. He has to bring up my dad’s situation.”

Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Atlanta.

Vivian Nereim is the Gulf bureau chief. She has more than a decade of experience in the Arabian Peninsula and was previously a reporter for Bloomberg News covering Saudi Arabia. More about Vivian Nereim

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